Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) - some partying kids go to a cabin out in the woods, and next door is another cabin where the last girl lives. Jason is as usual a huge party-pooper. This isn't a big favorite of mine, the characters are such basic cliches - if a character has a line of dialogue, it serves no purpose but to reinforce their paper-thin stereotype; none of the party kids has any personality beyond that. I didn't care if they all died. And then somebody came up with the idea of having a precocious child as a lead character. Good grief. It did have the usual good atmosphere and...and...3.5/5.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) - The precocious child from the last movie is now in his 20's and living in a halfway house for the mentally disturbed or something. It's not long before a guy in a hockey mask is once again giving the local police department a lot of extra work to do. This is another favorite of mine - the characters are really well written and a lot of fun. It's got a wonderful sense of humor about it too. Another 4.5/5 entry in the franchise.

Four hours of Elm Street extravaganza: All you ever wanted to know or didn't know can be found on this documentary. Enjoyable and Interesting however, some of the actors didn't age well (Tuesday Knight, wtf?) while others look better now than they did back then (Lisa Wilcox, Kim Myers). 5/5

10-1 - watched a grim South American ghost story called THE APPEARED. Not bad, moves a little slow. 6/10

10-2 - watched DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN although it's more like Dracula & Frankenstein occasionally appear in the vicinity of each other. Big bowl of deep-fried cheese from Al Adamson. 5/10and FURY OF THE WOLF MAN with Paul Naschy, wolf man's ex-girlfriend is a mad doctor who is trying to control his mind. Or something. This one was a tedious mess. 1/10

10-3 - watched TRAUMA, murky giallo in which Detective Handsome Man investigates murders at a girls' boarding school. The killer reveal makes basically zero sense, but the movie only exists to show teenagers without clothes anyway. 2/10and THE BLOODY BROOD, one of those "Evil Beatnik" flicks from the 50s; a Nice Upstanding White Boy tracks down his brother's killer. As far as this subgenre goes, I've seen worse. Notable mainly for being Peter Falk's film debut. 5/10

On tonight's list: SHOCK and THE SHE-BEAST.

Logged

Through the darkness of future pastThe magician longs to seeOne chance opts between two worldsFire walk with me

October 1: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) - Better than I remember and still scary. Incredible film in my opinion.

October 2: Cemeterio del terror (aka Cemetery of Terror (1985) - Pretty terrible and generic but entertaining. Group of young folks have a party in an old abandoned mansion. After finding an old evil book they decide to liven things up by stealing a corpse and attempt to bring it back to life via the book. Of course they stole the corpse of the book's author who was a demonic murderer. The film surprisingly shifts its focus to different characters in the last half hour. The director of this made the much better and much sillier Don't Panic in 1988.

October 3: Mark of the Vampire (1935) - Tod Browning film about the strange happenings and deaths in a local village that are blamed on vampires. It gets a little goofy but it's still enjoyable and has some lovely atmosphere.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) - Tommy Jarvis, the guy from the previous two movies, is having nightmares about Jason. So he decides to dig up Jason's body and make really, really sure he's dead. Of course this results in Jason coming back to life and it's not long before he's off ruining everyone's weekend yet again. Jarvis tries to convince the sheriff that Jason is back, but he doesn't really believe that people can come back to life, and the fact that Jarvis spent the previous movie in a mental institution doesn't exactly boost his credibility either. But the sheriff's daughter thinks he's cute, so she teams up with him to stop our machete wielding fiend. This is kind of a departure from the earlier movies as the main characters aren't the focus of Jason's killing spree - he's mostly killing any random people he comes across. It's played somewhat for laughs, and I found it very entertaining. They don't make a comedy out of it, just add a bit of silliness. Not one of the very best in the franchise, put pretty good. 4/5.

Just watched Dario Argento's Phenomena. I remember seeing the VHS tape of this (under the alternate title, Creepers) back in the 80s. Was not yet a horror fan, and between the cover art (which turned out to be a bit misleading) and an older friend's description, I was not about to rent it at the time.

Looking at it today, it's a pretty wild movie. It starts out with a scary and mysterious murder that hooks you right away, then it spends most of its runtime meandering through lots of weirdness. A serial killer on the loose, a girl who has a telepathic rapport with insects, Donald Pleasence in Switzerland with a Scottish accent and a chimp for a servant. And apart from a heavy metal soundtrack that doesn't seem to go with anything that's happening, everything fits into the story somewhere, even if it's just to set up one cool scene later on. It's not overly scary until about the last half hour, when it all comes together and Argento cranks up the tension before letting fly with the blood, gore and other insanity. I liked it.

Watched "Alone in the Dark" last night. The film cannot decide whether to be an action movie or a horror film, and that's probably the fault of Mr. Uwe Boll. We get all the same shots of people kicking butt with firearms as the creatures close in on Bureau 713's final Alamo stand at the mine entrance.

I did like the special bullets used against the darkness demons. I did not like the ending at all, and too much of the big last stand battle reminded me of "Starship Troopers."

Just watched Dario Argento's Phenomena. I remember seeing the VHS tape of this (under the alternate title, Creepers) back in the 80s. Was not yet a horror fan, and between the cover art (which turned out to be a bit misleading) and an older friend's description, I was not about to rent it at the time.

I first watched it years ago under the "Creepers" title as well. It is a weird film when you think about it.

Used to be one of my favorites back in video days. Great compilation of fright and terror flicks edited together and shown in themes narrated by Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen. Could have done with a little less Halloween (1978) and When a Stranger Calls (1979). Thought it was funny they included the turd The Seduction. 4/5